Page 103 of Fate, Interrupted

“I didn’t stick my finger out and say hey, what the hell did you do to get that shiner,” she says, clearly exasperated with herself. “I referenced it. He understood.”

“You needled someone who punches people.”

“I made an observation,” she says. “Which he understood. It was effective. They’re cretins, young thugs. Probably too stupid to know when they’re being insulted.”

I let a slow breath out through my nose. My wolf is still close to the surface, watching.

“So, they intimidated a woman in a dark alley.”

“Yes, to make sure I understood what I’m doing,” she says.

She has my attention at that. “They told you to stay away from me?”

“Well, they never came out and said what exactly it was they took offense at. They suck at communicating.”

“But it was clear they thought you were doing something you shouldn’t be.”

“Apparently, I have questionable taste in the company I keep.”

She says it lightly. Her eyes give her away—still working through whatever happened in that alley, even if the rest of her is acting like it didn’t.

“Did they say my name?” I ask.

“They didn’t use it.”

No. They wouldn’t.

“They shouldn’t have come near you,” I say, and I mean it in both the plain sense, and the other sense, the one that lives underneath every reasonable thing I’ve said since I walked through her door. She hears the plain version. The other one I keep to myself, where it belongs.

“That may be true, but it’s not enough of an explanation for me,” she says.

“It’s the part that matters right now.”

“It matters to you,” she says. “It doesn’t tell me anything useful.”

She’s right. I watch her for a moment longer, confirming what I already know. She’s steady. Alert. Untouched on the surface. Not underneath. She crossed that line tonight. That she’s standing in her kitchen making dry observations about eye contact doesn’t mean the crossing didn’t cost her anything.

She asks it straight, the way she asks everything. “Why would they care? Why can’t people mind their own business?”

“It’s not about you,” I say.

She waits.

“When a human woman chooses a wolf, it’s not a personal decision to the people watching. It’s a statement. About what she thinks wolves are worth. About what she thinks human men are worth.” I pause. “There are men in this city who have decided that wolves are beneath them. Who need that to be true. And the women who love those men have built their lives around that being true. When you walk down the street with me, you’re not only making a choice about yourself.”

“I’m making a statement about them,” she says.

“Whether you intend to or not.”

She’s quiet for a moment, turning it over. She doesn’t react immediately, only works through the thing, taking it apart and looking at the pieces.

“And the guys in that alley,” she says.

“Probably not wolf-haters at their core,” I say. “Probably men who’ve watched what happens to people who get too close, seen it end badly, and decided the lesson is to stay away. Then you come along and refuse to be scared or ashamed. That threatens the choice they made.”

“Because if I’m not scared,” she says slowly, “and it doesn’t have to be the way they decided it has to be, ”

“Then they made the wrong call,” I say. “And nobody wants to have made the wrong call.”